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Causes

There are many direct causes of the information overload and is now commonplace in offices around the world as well in the private sphere. A webpage [1] has listed some of the causes of information overload:

• The widespread access to the Web
• The ease of sending e-mail messages to large numbers of people
• As information can be duplicated for free, there is no variable cost in producing more copies – people send reports and information to people who may need to know, rather than definitely need to know.
• Poorly created information sources (especially online), which:
o are not simplified or filtered to make them shorter
o are not written clearly, so people have to spend more time understanding them
o contain factual errors or inconsistencies – requiring further research

Almost everyone has access to Internet these days, so it becomes obvious that everyone with access to the Internet will in some way or another be affected by the information overload. How we handle it varies between people, but the fact that there is a huge amount of information visible for us every day, is a simple fact. As I will mention in the next section "What to do?" the important thing is how we chose to handle this information. There is no reason that the information overload shall turn in to something negative.